Known for his love of animals, Coetzee expressed his concern about the increasingly distorted relationship between humans and animals as evident in the phenomenon of factory farming in an opinion piece last year. Animals being bred for consumption was the focus of this year’s Voiceless Writing Prize.

Voiceless quoted Coetzee, who was the head of the judging panel, as saying that, “The stories and essays submitted to Voiceless were infused with a sense that there is something badly wrong with the new world order, that in the course of doing unprecedented harm to animals we are also, in ways it is not easy to put a finger on, doing harm to ourselves”.

The joint winners of the $15 000 prize, Wayne Strudwick and Craig Simpson, were announced last month with Jessica Stanley winning $5 000 for the Reader’s Choice Award. A quarter of the profits made from the book will go towards the animal protection work that Voiceless does.

Wayne Strudwick and Craig Simpson have won first prize in one of the nation’s richest writing competitions, selected by an esteemed panel led by Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee.

Strudwick and Simpson were named joint winners who will split the $15,000 Voiceless Writing Prize sponsored by Australian Ethical Investment. A new literary competition by Voiceless, the animal protection institute, the competition recognises and encourages short fiction and essays exploring the human-animal relationship.